Can Liverpool add to 5 European Cups and 18 Leagues?

Liverpool supporters are quick to point out the disparity between the club’s glittering history and the relative lack of a similar tradition at Chelsea. Going into tonight’s semi-final first leg the London club will be acutely conscious, not merely of the inferiority of their record over the longer term, but of more recent history and two previous defeats against Liverpool at this stage of the Champions League.

Liverpool vs. Chelsea fixtures have acquired a deeper resonance since Roman Abrahamovich’s arrival at Stamford Bridge. They represent a clash between football royalty and the game’s nouveau riche. Their character was further sharpened by the personality clash off the field between cerebral Spaniard Rafa Benitez and Chelsea’s brash Portuguese manager Jose Mourinho.

Paradoxically, with the more measured Avram Grant at the helm, Chelsea may be better equipped to withstand the fevered atmosphere of a Champions League semi-final. Benitez has suggested as much and is both wary and respectful of his counterpart. On this occasion Chelsea will enjoy the advantage of home advantage in the second leg, something which Liverpool have benefited from in both previous clashes.

Nevertheless Liverpool’s previous experience reaching the final, and indeed winning, the world’s premier club competition, should instil a degree of self belief in the Anfield reds. Benitez has been quick to point out the comparative strength in the current squad as opposed to the team from 2005 who famously won the competition. He is also realistic enough to apprehend the extent of Liverpool’s task and the manager has been quick to identify Chelsea as favourites to win the tie.

Tonight Liverpool must ensure that they add to a history which Chelsea can only impotently aspire to.

Comments

Hernandez said…
Need a two-goal cushion to take to the Bridge. Don't forget we beat Inter Milan when we were away in 2nd leg.
22 April 2008 at 13:07
Owen Polley said…
We did. And we've beaten Barca and Juve in similar situations, but this is a different tie.
22 April 2008 at 13:10
Hernandez said…
What worries me is that by the law of averages, they are due a win over us. Need to come out of the traps quickly.
22 April 2008 at 13:39
Owen Polley said…
That worries me too. Third time lucky and all that.
22 April 2008 at 13:41
Hernandez said…
If we beat Chelsea again, do we get to keep them?
22 April 2008 at 13:54
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Football fever in Russia

Russia Blog is getting excited about Euro 2008. Indeed it is drawing parallels between Guus Hiddink and Peter the Great in terms of successful Russo-Dutch exchanges of expertise. Meanwhile, in Moscow, fans have been taking to the streets in order to celebrate the national team’s achievements.
Read more

Stormont might not collapse but paramilitaries continue to disfigure Northern Ireland

Image
The devolved institutions in Northern Ireland are supposedly ‘teetering on the brink’ of collapse yet again.  After repeated failures to agree a balanced budget or implement welfare reform created months of uncertainty, the Executive’s future is now in doubt because the PSNI believes members of the IRA were involved in murdering a republican hit man.  Despite its apparent seriousness, this particular predicament is unlikely to bring the shaky edifice at Stormont crashing down. The IRA was supposed to have disbanded its military ‘structures’ and decommissioned its entire arsenal of weapons back in 2005.  It was on the basis of this understanding that power-sharing resumed in 2007 and the DUP entered government with Sinn Féin.  From the outset it was a fairly flimsy pretext.   Less than a year after John de Chastelain, the retired Canadian general, oversaw decommissioning, the Independent Monitoring Commission reported that the IRA retaine...
Read more

Walker loada rubbish

Former BBC employee Brian Walker has overrun Slugger O’Toole lately with countless poorly structured, poorly written posts. It is possible quickly to recognize and avoid these by subjecting each Slugger piece to a cursory inspection and identifying those which feature characteristic lack of paragraphing and a tenuous grasp on the technicalities of linking source articles. Although I generally evade Walker’s posts by this method, occasionally (and unfortunately) I have persevered and found that their content is as unrewarding as the style in which they are written. Today, for instance, I inflicted upon myself Brian’s thoughts on a mooted Fianna Fail / SDLP merger . In actual fact, he is right to welcome news that the Southern Irish party has dropped this proposal from its agenda; however, the logic by which he arrives at this conclusion is parochial nonsense. To summarise, Walker believes that pursuing realignment with larger parties, whether they are from the rest of the UK or fro...
Read more